Birthday
by The Island Hopper
Summary: Rick and kid-Beth fic. It's Beth's 9th birthday and things go to shit, broh! Rick ain't the greatest dad but he's got to find a way to un-shit this sitch, broh!


**Birthday**

 **The Island Hopper**

 **Author's Notes: I'm sort of weirdly fascinated by what Beth's childhood would have been like, and while it probably wouldn't have been this squishy, that's what fanfiction is for. Rated for language (natch). Enjoy.**

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Rick's second to last thought before losing consciousness was _how fucking huge_ that thing was.

The thing in question looked like a bastardized version of a mythical Earth dragon. In place of horns were several nests of an extremely unpleasant insect found only in the Delta quadrant on a planet dubbed simply _Shit,_ as that was the first word that came to the lips of any explorer unlucky enough to find themselves there. The Shit insect, flightless but capable of bounding strides and shooting a venom from its right nostril that left its victim barfing up internal organs, buzzed angrily in the hives atop the dragon's head. The beast's tail, which looked like the soft fluffy tail of a house cat, swished threateningly.

Rick's last thought before losing consciousness was _how fucking stupid_ that thing looked.

The tail whipped at him, sending Rick flying into a tree trunk and knocking him out cold for a few seconds. When he came to, Bastardized Mythical Earth Dragon was peering down at him quizzically. "Ow! Jesus Christ!" he snarled. "That _hurt!_ Go a little easier on me, for c-c-crying out loud!"

The dragon drew itself up to its full height and let loose a shriek that nearly shattered his eardrums. He climbed to his feet and readjusted the glowing purple sword in his hand, making the bright pink armor which encapsulated him creak. He gritted his teeth. "This outfit is friggin' _lame_ ," he muttered, looking down at his shoes, which curled up near the toes as though they belonged on a Christmas elf. He silently decided to never let a dragon choose his outfit again.

Bastardized Mythical Earth Dragon reared up on its hind feet and roared, "If you have come to slay me, brave knight, then slay me! Before you, yourself, are slain!"

" _Slain?_ Where the hell did you learn a word like _slain?"_

The dragon shot Rick an annoyed look. "Look, just _do it!_ We haven't got all night."

"Thank _God_ for that," Rick answered under his breath, but took up his sword nonetheless. "All right, where do I…uh…w-where do I _slay_ you, o mighty beast?"

The dragon sighed melodramatically, flames shooting out of its mouth on the exhale, catching a flock of passing birds on fire. "You have to find the spot in the dragon's armor that has a _hole_ in it!"

Rick frowned. "Well, w-where the h-hell is it?"

"I can't _tell_ you that, you have to _find_ it!" the dragon whined.

"You're the size of the goddamned Empire State Building! _Work_ with me here!"

Bastardized Mythical Earth Dragon crouched down low, until it and Rick were face to face. The dragon glowered at him impatiently. "Why would a _dragon_ tell you where you could _kill_ it? _You're_ the brave knight, not me!"

"Only because you said I _had_ to be," Rick pointed out. A beeping from his watch caught his attention and his face lit up. "Ok, that's it! Time's up!"

" _Awwwwwww!"_ The dragon flopped down on its back, shaking the earth, and pouted. "Just five more minutes? _Pleeeeease?"_

Rick threw off the armor and shook his head. "Nope. S-Sorry, kiddo, it's bedtime."

"Just _five_ minutes! You haven't even slayed me yet!" The dragon crossed its burly arms across its chest, brow furrowed, refusing to look at Rick in the eye. "You've been gone for two weeks and _just_ got home! _You promised_ we could play _whatever I wanted_ when you got home!" 

"Y-Yeah, until _bedtime._ If we're late again, your mother'll put my ass in a sling. She's done it before. Unpleasant. Let's go."

"No!" The dragon sat up on all fours. Its eyes became large and watery. "I want to finish the game, Daddy! Please? Just one game!"

Rick caught the look on the dragon's face and felt his insides melt. He ran a hand over his face tiredly. "Fine. Fine. But let's wrap it up. I wasn't kidding about the ass sling."

He donned the hot pink armor, grabbed the purple sword, and tried to muster some sort of enthusiasm as the dragon began to stamp its feet and bellow hoarsely. "Awww, y-you look just like your mother!" he teased.

"Silence, indolent knight!"

" _Indolent?_ Where – "

The tail whipped around again, knocking him off his feet and causing him to slide several meters until he came to rest in a mud pit. The dragon peered down at him in curiosity. "Are you slain?" it asked.

Rick hauled himself into a sitting position, knocking some mud out of his ears. "Y-Yeah, sure, I'm slain, I'm slain. C-C'mon Beth, let's get the hell out of this simulator, eh? If I have to look at my dork-ass feet in these goddamned shoes for one more second, I'll shit."

A moment later, Rick stepped out of the simulator and with his exit, the armor and the mud disappeared, leaving him in his normal Earth clothes. A moment later, the dragon stepped through the exit and the pixels died away to leave a small, blonde, eight-year-old human girl. She gave her father a beaming smile and softly entwined her hand with his. "Good game, Daddy," she chirped.

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"Now, let's go over it one more time." Rick shifted in the pilot's seat of the flying saucer vehicle they were in. "Where were we tonight?"

"Showbiz Pizza," Beth responded in a bored tone, idly playing with a set of dummy controls on the dashboard that Rick had installed when she was younger, so that she could pretend to pilot the saucer too. "The one on Lincoln. Not on Fayette. And that's where I won _this."_ She held up a small, stuffed version of the dragon she had played in the arcade's simulator deck on Rozzcrone Seven, where they'd _actually_ spent the evening.

"A-And it's _not_ some weird alien stuffed animal that you won on a distant planet that your father took you to because Showbiz Pizza is completely lame, right?"

"Right."

"A-And you're going straight to bed once we get home because your mother will rage-shit herself if you're not in bed by the time she gets home at eleven, right?"

"Right."

"Atta girl."

But as their house loomed on the horizon, Rick could see from his vantage point that Ruth's car was already in the driveway and every light in the house was on. "Aw craaaap," he muttered, tightening his grip on the steering mechanism. He glanced down at the clock, and though he had to congratulate himself on traveling three lightyears inside of twenty minutes, it was still after eleven o'clock and he knew Ruth would hit the roof once she realized that he'd taken their daughter off-world for an adventure. Again.

"Ruth, I can explain," he announced without any greeting, standing in the doorway leading from the garage to the main house a few moments later. Beth stood behind him, clutching the stuffed alien dragon protectively, a hint of anxiety in her eyes. Rick turned to his daughter and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Go on up to bed, sweetie. I'll be up soon." Beth obeyed without a sound.

Ruth, still in her surgical scrubs, stood in the hallway facing her husband of a decade with arms crossed and a steely expression. "All right," she answered crisply. "Explain."

Rick set his jaw. "I promised her a night at that arcade on Rozzcrone Seven. Remember the one? W-Where we had wild monkey sex inside that big-ass pinball machine?"

"Rick."

"All right, all right. The pinball machine _and_ the jukebox. Quite a night, eh b-baby?"

Ruth sighed and brought a hand to her forehead. "Jesus Christ, Rick, you've been gone for two weeks, show up at the breakfast table this morning hungover and smelling like a sewer, and because you feel guilty you make wild promises to Beth. But what about your promise to me?" When Rick shrugged, Ruth continued, "Your promise to let Beth just, you know, be a normal kid? To stop taking her to all these – these – these weird planets and dimensions and hanging out with creepy aliens. It's gonna screw her up, Rick! How the hell is she going to relate to anyone her own _age?"_

"Other kids Beth's age are dumb," Rick proclaimed, digging a flask out of his coat pocket and taking a swig. The alcohol hit the back of his throat and he instantly calmed. "W-What do they like to do, huh? P-Play dolls or some shit? Fall down, break their ass? T-Their face? My-My- _My_ kid's seen the stars, Ruth. _Our_ kid." He took another swig. "I mean – I mean _Christ_ isn't that what we wanted? I mean I remember _talking_ about this – d-d-didn't we want our kid to see – see _everything?_ Everything you and I love?"

Ruth rubbed an eye and suddenly looked very weary. "You love, Rick. You love it. Not me. Not anymore." A worried expression crossed her face. "I just want her to have options."

"Hey, th-that's what I'm giving her!" Rick protested, waving his flask around and sloshing some of the bright purple alien liquor on the floor. _"Every_ option! Every option _in the known universe!"_

"And what about being a normal human kid, huh?" Ruth asked tiredly. "How about that option, Rick? How about the option where she has _friends,_ and _sleepovers,_ and conversations with kids her own age about anything other than _aliens,_ and _dimensions,_ and her obsession with that one weird bug on Shit that makes you puke up your spleen – "

"Yeah, tell me about it," Rick murmured.

Ruth sighed again and put her arms around her husband gently. Such a gesture was becoming increasingly rarer as their fights, which had been non-existent for the first few years of marriage, grew in frequency and intensity throughout the years. "I just don't want her to grow up as some outcast who no one can relate to, who no one on her home planet likes, where she never really feels at home."

"Me," Rick responded slowly. "You don't want her to grow up to be me. I get it, Ruth." He sipped heavily on the flask before catching the disapproving look in his wife's eye. "Hey, I waited until she was in bed, d-d-din't I?" he snapped.

"It's not like your drinking is any secret to her, or anyone else for that matter." Ruth turned away. "My parents and co-workers always want to know why I'm still married to an alcoholic, unemployed scientist."

"I'm employed, Ruth."

"Running guns for a galactic resistance is hardly a job."

"R-Running guns for a galactic resistance put you through medical school and paid for this house, sweetheart. D-Don't knock it. J-Just because I'm not some asshole who sits in a cubicle all day, a l-little cog in the wheel of some gigantic, evil corporate machine that pollutes the earth and enslaves third-world factory workers, doesn't mean I can't provide for this family." He christened this statement with a large belch and stalked into the kitchen, intent on finding his stash of whiskey. Instead, he found a mound of presents and birthday decorations sitting on the dining room table. He frowned. "W-What the hell is all of this?"

"It _is_ your only child's birthday tomorrow. You know that, right?"

 _Fuck._ "Yeah. Yeah, of course I do. That's why I'm back," Rick replied defensively. He sucked his bottom lip. "You didn't, uh – you d-didn't happen to – "

"Yes, all the gifts are marked from you _and_ me. Don't worry. I knew you wouldn't be able to tear yourself away from whatever bar or intergalactic hooker you were busying yourself with for the past two weeks to pick up a couple of birthday presents for your daughter."

Shit, that one stung. He drained the last few drops of the liquor out of his flask and continued his trek towards the kitchen, where more mind-numbing liquid was at hand. "A-And the decorations – "

" – are for the party tomorrow afternoon," Ruth finished. "I invited Beth's class at school. I ordered the cake. I wrapped the presents. And tomorrow, I'm certain I'll be the one decorating the house."

Rick's hands shook a little as he unscrewed the cap of the whiskey bottle and shakily poured himself a glass. "N-No, I'll…I'll help, Ruth, I'll…" The shaking in his hand caused him to drop the glass, where it shattered on the tile floor. He looked at it numbly. "I – I'll – Ruth, I'll – "

"Goodnight, Rick," Ruth interrupted quietly, a pained look in her eye as she carefully studied her husband for a moment before silently making her way upstairs, leaving him alone in the kitchen.

Rick stared at the broken glass on the floor. "I'll – I'll – I'm – I'm sorry," he whispered, shutting his eyes.

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Rick awoke with a start. He was still on the couch, where he'd passed out last night after knocking out a half a bottle of whiskey, and the TV in front of him was tuned to a loud, irritating cartoon. A bowl of half-eaten cereal sat on the coffee table in front of him, the milk lukewarm. Beth must have had breakfast in front of the TV; the spectacle of her father passed out on the couch surrounded by liquor bottles apparently didn't faze her anymore, Rick realized.

The pounding in his head made itself apparent as he pulled himself into a sitting position. He clutched the sides of his head and moaned, fumbling for the bottle beside him, ripping off the cap, and taking a long pull. The throbbing subsided after a few more gulps and he sighed somewhat contentedly. After a beat, he pulled the sludgy cereal towards him and finished it off.

He stumbled into the shower and gave himself a slap-hazard shave under the hot water and emerged to find it was close to one o'clock in the afternoon. "Shit," he muttered, pulling on some clothes as he remembered the birthday party. He appeared in the dining room a moment later to find Ruth taping the last of the balloons to the streamers.

"I – I was going to help," he stammered.

"I wasn't sure if you were ever going to wake up again, and the party starts in ten minutes," Ruth explained, getting down off the ladder and wiping the sweat from her forehead. "What do you think?"

Rick shrugged. "Looks like a kid's birthday party, I guess. That's the ambiance you're going for, right? Where's Beth?"

"Outside on the front porch, waiting for everyone to arrive." Ruth put the ladder away just as the oven beeped. "Those are the cupcakes. You can help me ice them, if you want."

Icing cupcakes was just about the least cool thing Rick could think of, but some part of him was eager to make up for the fight of the previous evening and so he followed Ruth into the kitchen and pulled the cupcakes out of the oven. He was soon absorbed in decorating each cupcake with illustrations of some of the aliens and interdimensional beings Beth and he had encountered in their travels, and was chuckling over a particularly anatomically-correct Schlamm from the planet Schlammy 4 when the front door slammed.

"Mooooom!" Beth cried from the hallway.

"Are your friends here?" Ruth asked with a smile, lining up the last of the party favor bags on a table in the foyer.

Beth's eyes were wide and vulnerable. "They-They're not here. No one's here."

Ruth frowned and glanced at her watch; the party was due to start twenty minutes ago. She put on a brave face for her daughter. "Everyone is just running a little late, kiddo. Try not to worry. They'll be here soon."

She shooed Beth back out onto the porch and tried to busy herself with last minute adjustments to the decorations. She opened a drawer in a cabinet where she'd stored a few extra birthday invitations and quickly scanned the time and date. They were correct. Ruth bit her lip.

Rick finished with the cupcakes and poured himself some scotch in a child's party cup, gulping it down gratefully. If he was going to spend the afternoon with a dozen or more mewling brats, he was going to need some liquid fortification.

"Rick!" Ruth hissed, sticking her head through the kitchen doorway. He glanced up at her in surprise. "It's twenty-five after and there's no kids."

"I know. It's fucking great."

"No, I mean, no one showed up for the party," Ruth whispered. She threw a quick glance at the front door, where through the small window to the right of the door, she could see Beth sitting patiently on the front stoop, her chin in her hands. "What do we do if no one comes?"

"Eat all the cupcakes and drink all the whiskey. Once we're d-drunk enough, we'll play 'pin the tail on the person you want to have sex with'," Rick offered, biting into one of the cupcakes he'd just decorated. "S-Sounds like a great party to me, really."

"What about Beth?"

"Well...she probably shouldn't do those last two thi – "

"I mean about no one coming to her birthday party." Ruth slid down the wall until she was seated on the floor, her knees up to her chest. "Shit, Rick. What's this going to _do_ to her? _No one_ wanted to come to her birthday party?" She gritted her teeth. "Kids are assholes."

"Yep," Rick replied, settling down next to her and passing her a paper cup full of scotch. "On the b-bright side, we already screwed the kid up pretty bad, so exponentially, this won't have much of an effect on her."

Ruth downed the contents of the cup in a single gulp, then crumpled it in her fist. "Ruining my baby girl's birthday like this. What the fuck is _wrong_ with them? _And_ their shitty parents?"

Rick belched. "The kid talks about puking insects in the course of g-g-general conversation. Lots of adults can't handle that level of awesome from an eight year old."

"Nine year old."

"Mommy?"

Beth stood on the threshold of the dining room, her face crumpled in what both Rick and Ruth recognized as the precursor to an epic meltdown. "Baby, come here," Ruth commanded softly. Beth needed no further encouragement and flew into her parents' arms. She wrapped herself around Rick and bawled uncontrollably while Ruth stroked her hair and kissed her cheeks softly. When Rick's shirt was soaked, Beth crawled onto her mother's lap and did the same thing.

He wanted a drink. He wanted it _badly._ He wasn't adept at dealing with anyone's tears, as he found it hard to muster up the necessary emotion to care, but the sight of Beth crying could always produce a kind of internal, helpless panic.

He was Rick fucking Sanchez. He did not panic. He was not helpless.

Unless it was Beth.

"Don't take it too hard, kid," he said in what he hoped was a calm, soothing voice, wiping away a few of the tears on Beth's cheek with his thumb. "Those kids are dickwads. Who the hell wants to party with them, anyway?"

Beth sniffed. "I do," she whispered in a heartbroken voice.

Christ, he needed a drink.

The sound Ruth's hospital pager rattled on the dining room table. With an apologetic look, Ruth transferred her still weeping daughter onto Rick's lap. Her face fell when she looked at the screen. "It's an emergency. I gotta go," she said quietly. She leaned down next to Ruth and kissed her forehead. "I know it's hard, baby. But you're going to be all right. Daddy's going to stay with you, and Mommy will be back tonight."

"R-Ruth, for fuck's sake, you're leaving _now?"_

"Should I just ask the teenager who was just hit by a semi and needs me to perform emergency surgery to please stop dying?" Ruth rose. "Listen, I really am sorry. I have to go in early. I'll be home by the usual time." She hugged her daughter one last time. "Happy birthday, Bethie," she whispered to Beth.

The front door clicked shut a moment later and the house was silent except for the quiet sobs from Beth's small form. "Why don't they like me, Daddy?" she asked finally in a broken voice. Rick's arms tightened around her.

"You're too cool for them, that's why," Rick responded.

"If I'm cool, why don't they want to come to my party?"

"Because they're asswipes. And asswipes don't want to hang out with cool people. They just want to hang out with other asswipes." His eyes traveled over all of the decorations, games, plates and cups set out for a meal that wasn't going to occur, and felt the ball of helplessness tighten in his chest. "L-Look kid, I'm – I'm never going to win father of the year, all right? I'm – I'm gone a lot, and even when I'm here, I'm n-n-not always _here,_ you get me? I'm totally awesome at a _lot_ of shit, and I mean _a lot_ of shit. Like, _universes_ worth of shit. But there's other shit I'm not so good at. I'm not one of those fathers that, you know, can say a few words and make it all better, because a lot of things in life just suck, and there's really nothing you can do about it, and I'm not one of those guys who's going to lie to you about the shit that sucks. A-A-And once something _sucks,_ there isn't a whole lot you can do to make it _unsuck._ But-But I'll tell you one thing, Beth. I'll tell you one thing, kid, and it's something I know a lot about."

Beth looked up, salty tears drying on her cheek, and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "What's that, Daddy?"

He grasped her shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. "Beth, when shit _sucks,_ you need to _turn it up and fucking party!"_

An hour later, the entire house was crammed full of beings from every galaxy Rick knew how to contact, being from every dimension that Rick knew wouldn't fuck things up too royally, and as much alcohol as any and all of the beings in attendance had been able to gather on such short notice. Rick had dragged the record player console out to the middle of the living room and played punk and rock as loud as the stereo could handle. Aliens from Gammagamma soon discovered a taste for cupcakes and with their replicator gun made thousands of them.

All of them were hyped up on alien booze and Earth cupcakes, except for Beth, who was just hyped up on cupcakes and the best party she'd ever been to. "Again!" she screamed to a group of gorshbons, squishy creatures who let Beth use them as a trampoline, slinging her high up towards the ceiling, where she made a game of touching each blade on the ceiling fan.

Rick stumbled out of the kitchen, his umpteenth drink in his hand, and slung an arm around the first creature he saw – a tall, blueish being that resembled something like a sofa turned on its side. "Heyyyyy baby," he slurred. "Th-There's a bedroom in the back, wh-wh-what d'ya say, huh?"

"I have no orifice in which to copulate," the couch-alien tribbled, also quite inebriated. "My species reproduces by hurling a gelatinous goo that originates in our intestinal system at our mate and waits for an impact report."

Rick considered for a moment, then shrugged. "Truth be told I need to v-v-vomit anyway. Kill two birds, etc. C'mon."

"Daddy!" Beth shrieked from the ceiling, where she'd been able to stick thanks to the squishy liquid of her living trampolines rubbing off on her. She giggled. "You want to try this?"

"Hell no," Rick answered. "That sticky stuff, it – it ain't sweat, you know what I mean?"

Several hours later when the party finally ended (or rather, when it was getting close to the time that Ruth would be arriving home, and he had no interest in explaining the cross-galaxy mix of spontaneous party attendees), Rick carried an exhausted Beth up to her room and laid her gently in her bed. She yawned deeply, taking the stuffed alien dragon her father handed to her, and shimmied down inside the sheets, cuddling the stuffed animal. Rick gently laid the comforter over her and sat down on the edge of her bed.

"Epic birthday party, kid," he said softly, offering her a fist.

She bumped it with hers. "Legendary, bro," she replied sleepily with another yawn.

"Our little secret?"

She smiled warmly. "You know it, Daddy." He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and rose. She grabbed his hand. "Daddy?"

"What?"

She looked up at him for a long moment, her searching eyes seeming to study him carefully. Her small hand held steadfastly to his large, calloused one. "You're not like the other daddies."

"Fuckin' A, little miss. That all?"

"You're not like the other daddies. But…you're _my_ daddy." She let go of his hand, closed her eyes, and pulled the comforter up around her neck. "And I'm glad."

Rick stood still for a moment, looking down at her. It might have just been the light of the moon shining into the bedroom, and he would have sworn you were a buttface for even suggesting it, but a passerby might have noticed just a tiny bit of affection cross his face and a ghost of a smile on his lips.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, me too."


End file.
